


End of All

by kay_cricketed



Category: Die unendliche Geschichte | Neverending Story - Michael Ende, NeverEnding Story (1984)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-04
Updated: 2008-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 21:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_cricketed/pseuds/kay_cricketed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They share the smallest of moments, but it's enough to bolster even Bastian's weary heart.  Some stories don't require an ending to become happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End of All

**Author's Note:**

> I admit, I wasn't sure whether this would fit better in the film or book category; however, I do imagine it could do all right in both the book and the second film.

Bastian tries to explain happy endings to Atreyu, just the once.

They’re pressed thigh to thigh together, warmed more by their shared body heat than by the fire in front of them that laps greedily at the sky. Bastian, who has never known companionship like this—close, shared whispers in the dark, stifled laughter, attentive nodding that shifts olive-black shadows across Atreyu’s face—is hardly ready to give any of it up. So he entices Atreyu from his sleep with stories of home. At first, Bastian makes them more fantastical than they should be to compete with the wondrous world around him. But soon he realizes that Atreyu finds the simplest, dullest fact to be the most fascinating. This releases something inside of him. He lets a piece of himself, his true self, fall through his fingers.

At one point, Bastian jokingly adds, “And they all lived happily ever after, the end.” Atreyu cocks his head; he acts like his horse, really.

“The end?”

“Yes. That is the end of the story.”

“Well, that can’t make it very happy, now can it?” Atreyu says, not unkindly. Bastian flushes and tries to find a way to explain.

He does his best—first describing the literal traditions of storytelling back at home to Atreyu’s bewildered face. Then, when Atreyu asks, Bastian tells him that everyone wants a happy ending, really. For things to magically be all right for the rest of their lives. What Bastian doesn’t say, though he feels it burn in his heart, is that he’s looking for his own and may have found it, somewhere lurking in Fantasia.

“But it is the nature of things,” Atreyu says. “We move forward. There is no end, only the beginning of another story. Connections… we are ashes spread in dirt, I suppose, always blending in with other colors. No, Bastian. I don’t understand why you would want this happily ever after.”

“Some people,” Bastian tells him, “don’t mind a rest. Sometimes, don’t you just want to stop? So you can always feel good inside?”

Atreyu smiles faintly. In the firelight, his eyes are amber. “I would hope, instead, that there will be more good inside at another time.”

Bastian can’t imagine toiling forward forever like that, searching elusively for happiness. He can’t fathom the exhaustive concept, so he turns away and moves so that his leg isn’t gathering warmth from Atreyu’s anymore. “If I could,” he murmurs, “I would stop Fantasia here. Just now.”

Atreyu says nothing.

Bastian can hear Falcor fidget around in the clearing beyond them, his great underbelly sliding in the leaves. Then Atreyu’s fingertips are at his shoulder, gentle-like, restrained; they are a warrior’s hands, even so young. Bastian fumbles with his breath until he can catch it and then twists around to see Atreyu’s face. He has to see Atreyu’s face. There is something like wisdom in it, most times, and Bastian knows his compass for right and wrong is set there, delicately placed in the shape of Atreyu’s mouth.

Atreyu is smiling, albeit worriedly.

“The Nothing wanted to stop Fantasia,” he says.

Bastian’s cheeks would have blushed red, but he’s no longer that Bastian, in that body. He shakes his head. “Yes. No. You’re right, I spoke wrong. I don’t want to stop Fantasia. I want to stop you.”

“But then,” Atreyu tells him, “I would not do this.”

He squeezes Bastian’s wrist, thumb to flitting pulse, and doesn’t let go. And Bastian, for all the wishes he’d made to AURYN thus far, can think of nothing more to want than that.


End file.
